


my body will not be a legible one

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [12]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Chronic Pain, Conversations, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Names, Sign Language, complicated emotions and weird revelations, no one is okay but they're trying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27258520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: In a hut in the Crossroads, necessary conversations start to happen.
Relationships: Hornet & Quirrel (Hollow Knight), Hornet & Tiso (Hollow Knight), Quirrel/Tiso (Hollow Knight), The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Hornet & The Knight, The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Quirrel
Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957039
Comments: 10
Kudos: 81





	my body will not be a legible one

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone skipped the previous fic: essentially, everyone went to the hot spring in the crossroads, Hornet bandaged Hollow’s wounds, and Ghost got their head back on properly. They ended up settling in one of the houses in the crossroads to rest before trying to get Hollow up the well, and Ghost parted ways with the rest to do their own thing for a bit.

Tiso wakes up to the not entirely unfamiliar or unexpected, but still  _ incredibly _ unwarranted experience of feeling as though his joints have mutinied, and are doing their level best to burn holes in his chitin.

“Ah,” he mutters, somewhat less eloquently than he intends, but more eloquently than the whimper of pain that he barely managed to swallow before opening his mouth. “Ow.”

“We may have,” Quirrel starts, and cuts himself off with a painful-sounding breath, hunching forward where he sits. “We  _ may _ have been… overzealous with our assistance yesterday.”

“I warned you,” Hornet says, her voice and posture similarly taut. She holds her needle in one hand, and clutches her chest with the other. “That place was not made to sustain us.”

“I’m sorry,” Quirrel says, wincing through the motion of reaching forward to touch the tall thing on the shin. It turns its head slightly. “You may have to wait a little longer to leave this place.”

“Nonsense,” Hornet snaps, grip tightening on her needle. “They have suffered a long time for our sake, the least we can do—”

She starts to stand, her free hand pressed to the wall. She makes it all the way upright, her horns brushing the low ceiling, and immediately sways on her feet, stumbles, and sits back down with a  _ thump _ . “Perhaps we can wait a moment longer.”

The tall thing’s head turns once again, looking up at its sister. Hornet rubs idly at the horn on the less damaged side of its face, in the same gentle circular motion that Ghost likes.

“Does it have a name?” Tiso asks, gesturing with his good arm, even though it makes his joints crackle like a low-burning fire, sparks shooting up his arm; a sensation he can’t even process as pain, though it certainly is. “The… your sibling.”

“I call them Hollow.” Hornet says. “But they’ve indicated no name to me. I doubt they will—it was impressed upon them early that they were not to have an identity beyond their title.”

“I’m not surprised that it took, if everyone made a habit of talking about them like they weren’t here,” Tiso says, startled to sharpness.

Hornet  _ hisses _ , her cape rising as her secondary limbs unfold.

Tiso goes for his shield, and consequently ends up balled up on the floor, whimpering.

Quirrel has his nail in his hand, and he’s half-upright, though it clearly hasn’t done him any favors either.

“No threat displays,” Quirrel says, when they’ve all settled themselves back to the floor, his voice calm and even beneath the waver of pain. “Not while we’re all so on edge.”

“My apologies,” Hornet says, in a voice like she’s bitten into an infected Crawlid. “You’re correct, Tiso. I have developed poor habits in regards to the treatment of my sibling.” She looks down at the tall thing. “Do you have a preference on what we call you, sibling?”

For a moment, there’s no response. Then they lift their surviving hand, shaking with the effort of dragging it to chest-height, and points at Hornet.

“Hollow, then?” Hornet asks.

The cracked face tilts back and forth.

“No? What… oh, oh, I see.”

Tiso breathes out, slowly. The air feels thick enough to cut.

“Their name is Holly,” Hornet says, in a small voice. “I’ll… I’m…”

She tries to get up again, this time aiming definitively for the door, and Tiso manages to catch her by the arm when she topples over. It sends searing pain up his shoulder, but Hornet doesn’t crash face-first into her sibling’s newly-bandaged abdomen, so it’s a fair trade.

_ Ow, _ though.

Before Tiso can even steady himself, Hornet jerks her arm out of Tiso’s slack grip, backing into the corner of the hut, like a hunted thing, needle gripped in her hand.

“Hornet, please,” Quirrel says, in a thready little voice. “It’s over now. You can rest.”

Tiso hates that voice. He hates that look on Quirrel’s face, that curled-up hope in his expression. He hates how hopeful Hornet looks in turn; the exhausted awareness that passes between them. 

“Well-met, Holly,” he says, instead of looking at either of them. “Your little sibling took a shine to Hornet’s name for them too. She seems to be good at that.”

Holly lifts their hand, arm shaking with the effort of it. They pinch their thumb and foreclaw together before resting it on the chin of their mask, hand twitching slightly.

_ Little. _

At least, Tiso  _ thinks _ it’s the sign for ‘little’. That would make sense.

Their hand drops to chest level, then one finger juts out, making a squiggle in the air. Not a squiggle—a question mark.

_ Little? _

“Smaller than you, certainly,” Tiso clarifies.

Holly’s hand twitches slightly, then their arm rises, slowly and painfully, back to their face. They crook their first two fingers, rest them against their forehead, and drag them down.

_ Old. _

“They’re right,” Hornet says, emerging from her corner, looking slightly less trapped now that the attention is off her. “The two of them are the same age, I am younger by perhaps a year.”

Tiso laughs, and it comes out in an odd, strained voice that doesn’t sound like his. “They’ve been calling this place the Mad Kingdom for generations. Over a century. You mean to say you three… all four of you, including Ghost, are  _ that old? _ ”

Quirrel gestures vaguely. “I only remember about… half of it, if that makes you feel better?”

Tiso grimaces. “No, actually. But thanks for trying.”

“Why are you here, Tiso?” Hornet asks, abruptly. “In Hallownest.”

For a moment, Tiso doesn’t even  _ remember.  _ It feels like so long ago, such a different self.

“The Colosseum.” 

“Another mystery, that,” Quirrel says. “How did you hear about it, if this place has been sealed for generations?”

“The Colosseum has long since been unchanged,” Hornet says. “It did not change in my—in the Pale King’s time, though his arrival uprooted the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. My mother’s theory was that the Lord Fool was once a Wyrm, and chose to concentrate his power in a single place, rather than across a kingdom.”

“Perhaps,” Quirrel says, expression creased with thought.

Holly twitches. They drag their hand up from their side, bringing it to the top of their head, fingers curling to tap at their scalp.  _ King. _

Hornet takes a deep, unsteady breath.

Holly’s hand drops back to their side, then rises, with effort, palm up, shaking back and forth. It’s barely half of a gesture, but Tiso can guess easily enough what they mean.

_ Where? _

Quirrel makes an uncertain noise.

Hornet presses her thumb to her foreclaw and jerks the sign forward.  _ Don’t. _

Tiso can’t read Holly’s expression perfectly, but he’d bet Geo that they look  _ hopeful. _

“I certainly haven’t seen him,” Quirrel says. “But there are many corners of Hallownest I haven’t explored. Perhaps Ghost will know.”

Tiso is uncomfortably sure that Ghost  _ does _ know, and that Holly won’t like the answer.

“How many generations?” Quirrel asks, unprompted.

Tiso startles, then winces as the motion jars his aching joints. “I don’t know, Q. Hornet?”

Hornet stares into the surface of her nail. “Hallownest has been in stasis, to my understanding. The ways in which time was once kept are obsolete, especially underground. It has been a long time. Many bugs have lived and died. I did not attempt to count.”

Quirrel reaches for Tiso’s hand, as if he can hear his mind racing, and squeezes.

Before Tiso can say anything, or even start to think about the math of how long these two—three,  _ four _ bugs, and Radiance knows how many others—have been on their own in this dead kingdom, Ghost rushes through the door.

“My dear friend,” Quirrel says, warmly.

Ghost stops moving—stops moving forward. They’re still shaking all over.

“What’s wrong?” Tiso asks.

They flap their hands at their masked face.  _ Wind.  _ A fist to their chest, turning out.  _ Still. _ Arms crossed in front of them, one fist up and one fist down.  _ Trapped. _

“What?” Tiso says.

Ghost keeps signing. One hand across, then dropping down.  _ Cliff. _ Hands flapping at their face again.  _ Wind.  _ Pointing at their head.  _ Thought _ . Hand in front of them, palm out.  _ Stop. _

Hand curled, pinky out, palm-up. Then down, jerkily, to their side.

_ Wrong. _

“So we can’t leave.” Hornet says, tensely. “Perhaps that’s for the best.”

Ghost makes the same sign Hornet did, though they jerk their hand to the side, rather than forward.  _ No! _

“Ghost, dear friend,” Quirrel says. “We’ll have time to discuss this later. Let us bring Holly to the surface. There’s little we can do for them down here.”

_ H-O-L-L-Y? _ Ghost fingerspells.

“Their chosen name,” Hornet says. “Quirrel, if you will?”

Quirrel lifts Holly’s legs while Hornet ducks under their arm and holds up their head.

Led by Ghost, who still shakes, they head toward the well.


End file.
